Listen To Criticism: It Can Spur New Ideas, Goals

So you're 55 years old. Maybe 70 and older. And you're wondering whether your professional heights are way behind you.

Think again, says Jim Collins. The red-hot author sees that older range as full of opportunity.

He points to geniuses in the worlds of art (Pablo Picasso) and architecture (Frank Lloyd Wright) who stayed productive well into their 70s to 80s.

"At 65, we've used only one-third of our peak creativity resources," Collins, a Colorado-based business historian and researcher, told a crowd at the ISPA expo — a trade show for the luxury spa industry — last month in Orlando, Fla.

Collins got a standing ovation.

The author of the best-seller "Good to Great" offers other tips on how to reach the mountaintop:

 Listen to criticism and ideas. In 1996, Collins attended a business dinner to talk about organizational performance. Bill Meehan, who was a managing director of the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., lauded the author for the "very fine job" in research of his book "Built to Last." Meehan added, "Unfortunately it's useless."

Collins asked why. Meehan explained that the companies featured in the book were already great from the start. Why? They had fantastic leaders, including David Packard of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). But the book ignored the "vast majority of companies that wake up partway through life and realize that they're good, but not great." Among these firms, how did some become great?

That Meehan comment supplied the seed that created "Good to Great," perhaps Collins' most influential work. The author calls the razor-sharp remark a gift.

 Set flexible goals. When Norwegian Roald Amundsen was set to conquer the North Pole, he opened the newspaper one morning to find that Robert Peary beat him to the punch, claiming he arrived there in April 1909. Amundsen stayed cool. He told his crew that they would be the first to reach the earth's other pole.

Amundsen prevailed in December 1911, arriving in central Antarctica one month ahead of a British team led by Robert Scott.

 Advance. Take a good idea from somewhere else and find a way to execute the idea better. The key, Collins says, is to be disciplined and work consistently.

"To be human is to be creative," he said at the International Spa Association expo. "But you want discipline to amplify your creativity. How many of us were incredibly disciplined at age 5?"

Collins notes that Amundsen won the race to the South Pole by studying Eskimo life. By living with them for several months, he learned that dog sleds would be the most efficient and reliable means of moving across the frozen continent. Scott tried to be too creative; he used horses, which died by freezing in their own sweat.

 Capitalize. Collins uses the phrase "return on luck." He and Morten Hansen figured out a way to define, quantify and systematically study the role of luck in business success. "Great leaders seize good luck and make the most of it," Collins told Pulse magazine.

 Look ahead. Collins once asked Peter Drucker, a pioneer in the study of management, to name the favorite book he wrote.

"The next one," replied Drucker, who went on to write 10 more books before his death in 2005.

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03/16/2015 02:51 PM ET

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